“If I was a woman, would the harassment have been worse?”

It’s usually nothing serious, but I ride my bicycle a lot, and sometimes drivers pass me and yell things at me. I can never understand what they’re saying. I’m guessing they’re drivers who think they own the road and cyclists don’t belong there.

It normally happens on campus during the day, so it doesn’t bother me then. But last week, this happened when I was coming back to my dorm at 1:00 AM from a bar that was 3 miles away. I immediately thought, “If I was a woman, would the harassment have been worse? Would they have followed me while repeatedly shouting sexually explicit comments, then gotten angry when I asked them to stop?” Since the cold weather was gone (it was the end of April) and I was riding a bike, it was too warm to cover up. That in combination with the fact that I was coming from a bar means that I probably would have been dressed in a way that harassers would refer to as “asking for it”.

Although I’m a man, male superiority (or any superiority) still bothers me. A woman has just as much of a right to ride her bike at 1:00 in the morning as a man does, and she has the right to feel safe when doing so.

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